From marthajo at linc.cis.upenn.edu Thu Mar 4 23:28:40 1999 From: marthajo at linc.cis.upenn.edu (Martha McGinnis) Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1999 18:28:40 -0500 Subject: Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy: Predictions? Message-ID: Speaking for myself, what I'd welcome is a summary of instances of morphological behaviour that (a) could conceivably occur but doesn't; (b) isn't obviously 'bad' on syntactic or phonological grounds; (c) is predicted by DM not to occur, i.e. is incompatible with a version of UG that incorporates the principles of DM. That is, I'd like to see examples of pseudo-English, pseudo-Tagalog or whatever, where the differences between them and actual English, Tagalog etc. are claimed to be not just matters of historical accident but attributable to DM principles. Probably there are examples of this sort of argumentation in the literature that I just don't know about. To have a handy checklist of them would be great. I leave it to you to decide whether this is a suitable sort of message to post to the DM list and hopefully stimulate more discussion. Best wishes Andrew Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy Associate Professor Department of Linguistics, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand phone (work) +64-3-364 2211; (home) +64-3-355 5108 fax +64-3-364 2969 e-mail a.c-mcc at ling.canterbury.ac.nz http://www.ling.canterbury.ac.nz/adc-m.html From marthajo at linc.cis.upenn.edu Sun Mar 7 19:22:59 1999 From: marthajo at linc.cis.upenn.edu (Martha McGinnis) Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1999 14:22:59 -0500 Subject: Martha McGinnis: Predictions? In-Reply-To: <199903042328.SAA13119@linc.cis.upenn.edu> from "Martha McGinnis" at Mar 4, 99 06:28:40 pm Message-ID: I thought I would try to respond to Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy's request for a summary of correct predictions made by DM. I should say first of all that I don't think any one person can satisfy this request, which seems to call for a summary of both the current achievements and the as-yet-unrealized potential of the DM literature..! A tall order for a Sunday morning. What I thought I would do instead is summarize what I've tried to argue in my own work within DM. I hope others will write in and do likewise. In one paper (in the proceedings of a Workshop on Structure and Constituency in Native American Languages held at the U. of Manitoba, recently published as a MITOPL) I argued that the so-called "inverse" morphology in Ojibwa does not reflect syntactic or morphological "inversion," which is supposed to involve the logical subject becoming a syntactic object, and a logical object becoming the subject. I argued that such inversion does not occur syntactically. According to DM, morphological operations are subject to the same constraints as syntactic operations, making the strong prediction is that inversion cannot be brought about morphologically, either. Following Halle and Marantz (1993), I proposed that the apparent inversion in Ojibwa arises from (a) the fact that a single agreement slot can be sensitive to features of both the subject and the object, and (b) competition among vocabulary items for a single slot, such that (for example) the first-person item might always beat the second-person item, when both are compatible with the features of the agreement node. I argued that the competition analysis makes the right predictions for the distribution of first- and second-person agreement in the conjunct form in Ojibwa, by contrast with the inversion analysis. For more details, I refer you to the paper. (I'll try to post it on the web tomorrow.) A second paper (published in the proceedings of the 1996 Seoul International Conference on Generative Grammar) argued against grouping word formation rules into arbitrary blocks of mutually exclusive rules, in the manner of Stephen Anderson's theory of A-Morphous Morphology (AMM). As you know, AMM captures the insight (adopted as a central concept of DM) that morphophonological information is syntactically and semantically underspecified, so a fully specified syntax can't be "projected" from it. Rather, morphophonological "stuff" (for DM, vocabulary items; for AMM, the phonological information inserted by word-formation rules) competes for insertion into a fully specified representation, with the winning stuff blocking the insertion of other stuff. However, DM differs from AMM in the details of how competition and blocking takes place. Specifically, DM has a concept of "spelling out" or "exhausting" the features of a syntactic representation by inserting vocabulary items, while AMM treats blocking solely as the result of various types of interactions among word-formation rules. The "spelling out" theory makes the right predictions for the distribution of the plural suffix of Georgian verbs, by contrast with an approach that makes no reference to the representation to be spelled out. Again, the details are in the paper (which I'll also try to post tomorrow). I also have a third paper, a short ms., in which I tried to see if there's a specific kind of long-distance selectional relations among derivational affixes and stems in English, differing in nature from the local selectional relations among syntactic categories. I did an extensive search and didn't find any, which is at least weak support for the DM view that relations below the word level follow the same principles as relations above the word level. (This paper is still a bit drafty, so I'm not going to post it just yet, but if anyone's interested, please write to me directly.) It's worth noting that, like any generative linguistic theory, DM doesn't directly constrain surface forms. What it constrains is the range of structures and derivations underlying surface forms. So I can't point to a verb form and say, "DM could never have generated this!" The goal of DM, as I understand it, is instead to clarify the connection between morphology and syntax in such a way that each can be used to make predictions about the other. Best, Martha From marthajo at linc.cis.upenn.edu Wed Mar 10 03:49:25 1999 From: marthajo at linc.cis.upenn.edu (Martha McGinnis) Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 22:49:25 -0500 Subject: Martha McGinnis: DM papers Message-ID: As promised in my previous posting to the DM-list, I've put a few papers on the web -- one about blocking and competition in Georgian, one about "inversion" in Ojibwa, and a longer paper about Ojibwa morphology which was the basis of the other. They're in downloadable RTF format, but if you have another favourite format, let me know and I'll see what I can do. The papers can be found on my as-yet-embryonic personal archive: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~marthajo/papers.html. I'll also ask Rolf Noyer to add them to his DM bibliography/archive at http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~rnoyer/dm/bib.html. Best wishes, Martha From marthajo at linc.cis.upenn.edu Tue Mar 30 17:48:55 1999 From: marthajo at linc.cis.upenn.edu (Martha McGinnis) Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 12:48:55 -0500 Subject: Laura Benua: Maryland Mayfest Message-ID: Maryland Mayfest on Morphology May 19-21, 1999 Hosted by the Department of Linguistics University of Maryland, College Park For more information, visit our website at http://www.inform.umd.edu/Linguistics/ Every year, the Linguistics Department at the University of Maryland, College Park organizes MAYFEST, a colloquium where speakers are invited to report on a variety of issues related to one theme. This year's Mayfest will focus on morphology. Regularities of word form have been studied from a variety of perspectives. Syntacticians have proposed that word form reflects phrasal structure and, in feature-checking theories, that morphological features drive syntactic movement. Phonologists have long been concerned with the mutual influence of the morphological and phonological components. Investigations of how word structure is manipulated also shed light on language acquisition and linguistic processing. Mayfest will bring together linguists with a range of interests in morphological issues to stimulate dialog across the various sub-disciplines. PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE for updated information, visit our website at http://www.inform.umd.edu/Linguistics/ Wednesday, May 19 9:00 coffee, breakfast 9:45 Opening remarks 10:00 - 11:00 Mark Baker (Rutgers University) TBA 11:00 - 12:00 Stephen Anderson (Yale University) TBA 12:00 - 1:30 lunch break 1:30 - 2:30 Ellen Woolford (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) "Ergative Agreement Systems" 2:30 - 3:30 Michael Ullman (Georgetown University) TBA 3:30 - 4:00 coffee break 4:00 - 5:00 Mark Aronoff (SUNY Stonybrook) "Universal and Particular Aspects of Sign Language Morphology" 6:00 dinner party Thursday, May 20 9:30 Coffee, breakfast 10:00 -11:00 Elan Dresher (University of Toronto) TBA 11:00 - 12:00 Rolf Noyer (University of Pennsylvania) TBA 1:00 - 4:00 Poster Session Marie Mount Hall, Rm. 1108B Friday, May 21 9:30 coffee, breakfast 10:00 - 11:00 Alec Marantz (MIT) TBA 11:00 - 12:00 Geraldine Legendre (Johns Hopkins University) TBA 12:00 - 2:00 lunch break 2:00 - 3:00 Jonathan Bobaljik (McGill University) TBA 3:00 - 4:00 Alana Johns (University of Toronto) "Movement and Languages with Complex Morphology" 4:00 - 4:15 Closing remarks From marthajo at linc.cis.upenn.edu Thu Mar 4 23:28:40 1999 From: marthajo at linc.cis.upenn.edu (Martha McGinnis) Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1999 18:28:40 -0500 Subject: Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy: Predictions? Message-ID: Speaking for myself, what I'd welcome is a summary of instances of morphological behaviour that (a) could conceivably occur but doesn't; (b) isn't obviously 'bad' on syntactic or phonological grounds; (c) is predicted by DM not to occur, i.e. is incompatible with a version of UG that incorporates the principles of DM. That is, I'd like to see examples of pseudo-English, pseudo-Tagalog or whatever, where the differences between them and actual English, Tagalog etc. are claimed to be not just matters of historical accident but attributable to DM principles. Probably there are examples of this sort of argumentation in the literature that I just don't know about. To have a handy checklist of them would be great. I leave it to you to decide whether this is a suitable sort of message to post to the DM list and hopefully stimulate more discussion. Best wishes Andrew Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy Associate Professor Department of Linguistics, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand phone (work) +64-3-364 2211; (home) +64-3-355 5108 fax +64-3-364 2969 e-mail a.c-mcc at ling.canterbury.ac.nz http://www.ling.canterbury.ac.nz/adc-m.html From marthajo at linc.cis.upenn.edu Sun Mar 7 19:22:59 1999 From: marthajo at linc.cis.upenn.edu (Martha McGinnis) Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1999 14:22:59 -0500 Subject: Martha McGinnis: Predictions? In-Reply-To: <199903042328.SAA13119@linc.cis.upenn.edu> from "Martha McGinnis" at Mar 4, 99 06:28:40 pm Message-ID: I thought I would try to respond to Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy's request for a summary of correct predictions made by DM. I should say first of all that I don't think any one person can satisfy this request, which seems to call for a summary of both the current achievements and the as-yet-unrealized potential of the DM literature..! A tall order for a Sunday morning. What I thought I would do instead is summarize what I've tried to argue in my own work within DM. I hope others will write in and do likewise. In one paper (in the proceedings of a Workshop on Structure and Constituency in Native American Languages held at the U. of Manitoba, recently published as a MITOPL) I argued that the so-called "inverse" morphology in Ojibwa does not reflect syntactic or morphological "inversion," which is supposed to involve the logical subject becoming a syntactic object, and a logical object becoming the subject. I argued that such inversion does not occur syntactically. According to DM, morphological operations are subject to the same constraints as syntactic operations, making the strong prediction is that inversion cannot be brought about morphologically, either. Following Halle and Marantz (1993), I proposed that the apparent inversion in Ojibwa arises from (a) the fact that a single agreement slot can be sensitive to features of both the subject and the object, and (b) competition among vocabulary items for a single slot, such that (for example) the first-person item might always beat the second-person item, when both are compatible with the features of the agreement node. I argued that the competition analysis makes the right predictions for the distribution of first- and second-person agreement in the conjunct form in Ojibwa, by contrast with the inversion analysis. For more details, I refer you to the paper. (I'll try to post it on the web tomorrow.) A second paper (published in the proceedings of the 1996 Seoul International Conference on Generative Grammar) argued against grouping word formation rules into arbitrary blocks of mutually exclusive rules, in the manner of Stephen Anderson's theory of A-Morphous Morphology (AMM). As you know, AMM captures the insight (adopted as a central concept of DM) that morphophonological information is syntactically and semantically underspecified, so a fully specified syntax can't be "projected" from it. Rather, morphophonological "stuff" (for DM, vocabulary items; for AMM, the phonological information inserted by word-formation rules) competes for insertion into a fully specified representation, with the winning stuff blocking the insertion of other stuff. However, DM differs from AMM in the details of how competition and blocking takes place. Specifically, DM has a concept of "spelling out" or "exhausting" the features of a syntactic representation by inserting vocabulary items, while AMM treats blocking solely as the result of various types of interactions among word-formation rules. The "spelling out" theory makes the right predictions for the distribution of the plural suffix of Georgian verbs, by contrast with an approach that makes no reference to the representation to be spelled out. Again, the details are in the paper (which I'll also try to post tomorrow). I also have a third paper, a short ms., in which I tried to see if there's a specific kind of long-distance selectional relations among derivational affixes and stems in English, differing in nature from the local selectional relations among syntactic categories. I did an extensive search and didn't find any, which is at least weak support for the DM view that relations below the word level follow the same principles as relations above the word level. (This paper is still a bit drafty, so I'm not going to post it just yet, but if anyone's interested, please write to me directly.) It's worth noting that, like any generative linguistic theory, DM doesn't directly constrain surface forms. What it constrains is the range of structures and derivations underlying surface forms. So I can't point to a verb form and say, "DM could never have generated this!" The goal of DM, as I understand it, is instead to clarify the connection between morphology and syntax in such a way that each can be used to make predictions about the other. Best, Martha From marthajo at linc.cis.upenn.edu Wed Mar 10 03:49:25 1999 From: marthajo at linc.cis.upenn.edu (Martha McGinnis) Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 22:49:25 -0500 Subject: Martha McGinnis: DM papers Message-ID: As promised in my previous posting to the DM-list, I've put a few papers on the web -- one about blocking and competition in Georgian, one about "inversion" in Ojibwa, and a longer paper about Ojibwa morphology which was the basis of the other. They're in downloadable RTF format, but if you have another favourite format, let me know and I'll see what I can do. The papers can be found on my as-yet-embryonic personal archive: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~marthajo/papers.html. I'll also ask Rolf Noyer to add them to his DM bibliography/archive at http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~rnoyer/dm/bib.html. Best wishes, Martha From marthajo at linc.cis.upenn.edu Tue Mar 30 17:48:55 1999 From: marthajo at linc.cis.upenn.edu (Martha McGinnis) Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 12:48:55 -0500 Subject: Laura Benua: Maryland Mayfest Message-ID: Maryland Mayfest on Morphology May 19-21, 1999 Hosted by the Department of Linguistics University of Maryland, College Park For more information, visit our website at http://www.inform.umd.edu/Linguistics/ Every year, the Linguistics Department at the University of Maryland, College Park organizes MAYFEST, a colloquium where speakers are invited to report on a variety of issues related to one theme. This year's Mayfest will focus on morphology. Regularities of word form have been studied from a variety of perspectives. Syntacticians have proposed that word form reflects phrasal structure and, in feature-checking theories, that morphological features drive syntactic movement. Phonologists have long been concerned with the mutual influence of the morphological and phonological components. Investigations of how word structure is manipulated also shed light on language acquisition and linguistic processing. Mayfest will bring together linguists with a range of interests in morphological issues to stimulate dialog across the various sub-disciplines. PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE for updated information, visit our website at http://www.inform.umd.edu/Linguistics/ Wednesday, May 19 9:00 coffee, breakfast 9:45 Opening remarks 10:00 - 11:00 Mark Baker (Rutgers University) TBA 11:00 - 12:00 Stephen Anderson (Yale University) TBA 12:00 - 1:30 lunch break 1:30 - 2:30 Ellen Woolford (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) "Ergative Agreement Systems" 2:30 - 3:30 Michael Ullman (Georgetown University) TBA 3:30 - 4:00 coffee break 4:00 - 5:00 Mark Aronoff (SUNY Stonybrook) "Universal and Particular Aspects of Sign Language Morphology" 6:00 dinner party Thursday, May 20 9:30 Coffee, breakfast 10:00 -11:00 Elan Dresher (University of Toronto) TBA 11:00 - 12:00 Rolf Noyer (University of Pennsylvania) TBA 1:00 - 4:00 Poster Session Marie Mount Hall, Rm. 1108B Friday, May 21 9:30 coffee, breakfast 10:00 - 11:00 Alec Marantz (MIT) TBA 11:00 - 12:00 Geraldine Legendre (Johns Hopkins University) TBA 12:00 - 2:00 lunch break 2:00 - 3:00 Jonathan Bobaljik (McGill University) TBA 3:00 - 4:00 Alana Johns (University of Toronto) "Movement and Languages with Complex Morphology" 4:00 - 4:15 Closing remarks